Pak Lah failed, Najib striving not to follow

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Sep 21, 2009

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 21 — By consensus, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has failed miserably and squandered Barisan Nasional's historic 2004 mandate because he became a prisoner to Umno. His successor is trying hard to cut free from the party.

Datuk Seri Najib Razak is barely warming his seat as Umno president and prime minister for six months but is already facing the push back from the party warlords even sooner than Abdullah.

Abdullah, or Pak Lah as he was known to all, is on record as the shortest-serving prime minister but served a while longer as Umno president than founding president Datuk Onn Jaafar. The reasons for most Umno presidents leaving office can be eerily similar.

Some say that his fear of what his party felt set in after the 2004 party assembly when he realised that he could not stop the practice of money politics. Others say it was a year into his office when Abdullah succumbed to the wishes of the warlords.

Najib has not had the pleasure of at least a year to run his ideas or stamp his authority on the nationalist Malay party that has won every election since before independence in 1957. His 1 Malaysia remains a slogan, the economy sputtering despite two stimulus packages and the Cabinet is distracted by fractious fights within coalition partners.

The troubles within his ruling Barisan Nasional coalition prompted him to appeal for unity in his first Hari Raya Aidil Fitri message as prime minister yesterday as he sought to regain the initiative to keep the ship together in troubled waters.

His efforts have been in vain.